Figuring Out Your Strengths

3:49 PM
Katy
5 Comments

Now that I have a 9 year old daughter, there are some things that I'm realizing about myself that I never saw before.

One is that I can't play. You know that imaginative stuff that kids do with their dolls and toy cars? Where they imagine scenarios and then act them out?

My girl keeps begging me to play Barbies with her. I tried. I can't do it.

At least not the way that she does it.

This made me try to remember what it was that I did for all those hours with my Barbie dolls when I was 9. Because I had Barbies, and I remember "playing" with them.

My dad built me a Barbie house. It had several rooms. I spent countless hours on the cold basement floor, applying decorative painting to the walls of the kitchen, installing towel racks in the bathroom, and I even had electricity running to the lights in the attic. I remember being obsessed with the bathroom plumbing (a pump and nozzle for the shower head). And my legs locking up from kneeling on the concrete for so long.

I don't remember actually playing with the dolls that much.

(one of many trips to Lowes.)

I am using this self-discovery to aid my kids in figuring out what they are good at, because I think early identification of interests is important for the future. It scares me to think that my kids could spend 12-16 years sitting through public education and graduate totally clueless about their skills and strengths. I want something better for them.

So far my girl shows an intense interest in gardening and cooking, so I'm trying my best to provide her the tools to explore that.

Incidentally, the veggies we planted? Most of it died or quit producing, except for the cherry tomatoes, and the watermelon plants are still alive. I don't know what we did wrong. Hmmm.

I'm obsessing about building my daughter a little greenhouse next. But first maybe we should learn to grow plants, right?

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5 comments:

Katy I'm right there with you and the not being able to play dolls, I just can't do it either. And I love that pic your kids on the cart at Loews, the guys at HD always yell at me for letting my kids ride on the cart. I say they're my kids, I'm in control and believe me they're safer on here than roaming the aisles with all the other crazy carts and forklifts. I love knowing there's another female out there who takes her kids with her to buy lumber, this is real life in the real world folks, kids and all!!!

Hey, I found a free book on amazon for a kindle download...a historical by Beverley Kendall. Problem is, once you read that one, you want to get the other 3 that go with it. If you search for her name they all come up. I've read 2 of the 4 (got the others in the TBR queue for vacay). My Public Service Announcement for the day.

i kinda hoped i'd raise all boys, but i ended up with one of each. such blessings, both of them. by the time my daughter was 3 weeks old i had realized- follow her lead. when she was little we called her gadget girl because she had to know how everything worked so she could figure out how to make everything work better. when she graduated from high school my by-then ex-inlaws thought she should get a set of pots and pans. i talked her father into getting her tools and her own cordless drill. when she did play barbies (with her older brother) she hooked them by their hair to the hook on her favorite tonka wrecker. every time a garden fails, you learn something more. by this time next year you'll be posting how to raise a thriving garden. (and how to keep the frickin deer away...!)

A few years back I had an epiphany when a friend was telling a group of us about how her wedding the month before was the wedding she dreamed of since she was a little girl. It was at that moment that I realized I NEVER dreamed of getting married, I have however always dreamed of having my own house, fixing it, painting it, gardening, etc...

I still have not bought my own house, but am inspired by your posts and so day I will! In the meantime, I have a nice little apartment near a community garden. I've had a plot for a couple of years now. This is what I've learned so far:Year 1: I have to water the garden regularly, rain is not enough. Year 2: plants need nutrition from fertilizer or compost, soil is not enough. Year 3: I still have not learned to mulch the garden path in April when it is cool out. So today I have a lot of weeding to do in the 90+ degree heat and humidity. Maybe I'll learn better next year...

Good luck and have fun!

P.S. Maybe your daughter's Barbie needs a handy-person or interior designer to visit every so often?

Mom and Her Drill

I used to be a mechanical engineer and a single mom. I built a tiny beach house on Tybee Island for kicks (which I sold in 2015). Then I married Prince Charming and we're renovating his gigantic wreck of a fixer-upper (aka The Lake Mansion). It's like the Brady Bunch meets The Money Pit. (Nobody younger than 40 will even get that. Sigh.)